Advancements in morphology have enabled the creation of virtual fossil replicas that allow non-destructive processing and unprecedented analysis capabilities. However, interaction with fossil data in current scientific visualization interfaces is cumbersome and time-consuming. Our interdisciplinary project investigated this issue through a human-computer interaction (HCI) perspective. In a user-centered design process, Virtual Dissection utilized ethnographic methods to understand user workflows and their challenges, conducted behavioral studies to assess the utility of virtual reality (VR) and haptics in addressing interaction shortcomings, and prototyped a tool for the visuohaptic exploration of morphological datasets.
Our initial inquiry contributed to a better understanding of the challenges of morphology's tools and methods, which guided our investigation towards behavioral studies that assessed the potential of haptics and VR in enhancing mental representations of digital objects. Our experiments indicated that haptics improves memory retention and accuracy in object representation tasks across VR and desktop environments, and that this effect applies to interaction with tomographic data. Building on these findings, we developed a tool for visuohaptic exploration of morphological data, thereby reflecting the material properties of digital fossils and facilitating more intuitive and effective data interaction.
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